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June 25, 2015

Freddy and Frito and the
Clubhouse Rules. By Alison Friend. Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins. $17.99.

Kids ages 4-8 like to think
big – they do not even realize there is a box outside of which to think,
because they are too busy with their wide-ranging, unboxed thoughts. Dave
Wasson’s The Big Ideas of Buster Bickles
is a celebration of just this sort of thinking. Buster is as imaginative as
they come, waking up in a chaotic room containing everything from a dinosaur
attacking a toy train to a snare drum played with one drumstick and one fork, and
immediately thinking of all sorts of things. Unfortunately, his ideas run afoul
of mundane reality: instead of plopping fried eggs onto his face to give
himself “EGGS-ray vision,” he is supposed to be getting ready for school.
Things are not much better there: Buster’s show-and-tell offering of a
rampaging robot (with, yes, fried eggs for eyes) only brings him mockery. After
school, to help Buster feel better, his mother drops him off at the laboratory
of his Uncle Roswell (name taken from supposed alien-landing site definitely
intentional) – where there is a brand-new “What-If Machine” that cannot work
unless someone feeds it big ideas. But alas, Uncle Roswell is fresh out. What
to do? Buster is in his element now, and soon he and his uncle are walking on
the ceiling, watching a rain of guinea pigs, flying a rocket-powered cow, and
living in a world made of ice cream. Buster’s ideas get bigger and bigger until
– well, obviously there is going to be trouble, and of course there is, but it
is not terribly troubling trouble,
and clever Buster soon thinks his way out of it and returns to school with a
show-and-tell presentation that the class will never forget. Wasson’s drawings
look a lot like stills from modern cartoons, on which he has in fact worked for
Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network. So The
Big Ideas of Buster Bickles will be especially enjoyable for kids who watch
those animations and will immediately “recognize” Buster and the plot of this
book even before they have seen it. But even kids unfamiliar with today’s
cartoons will be captivated by the sheer enthusiasm with which Buster imagines
just about everything – the more impossible, the better.

Imagination is somewhat more
restrained in A.A. Livingston’s fairy-tale-based B. Bear and Lolly: Catch That Cookie! But only somewhat. The story
starts with the title characters (formerly known as Baby Bear and Goldilocks,
although that is not explained within this book, which is the second featuring
their adventures) making porridge that just does not come out the way it
should: it is too thick, slick, lumpy, jumpy, sticky and altogether icky.Suddenly the Gingerbread Man comes running
right past them, toppling their Porridge Perfecter and speeding off. B. Bear
and Lolly give chase, but the cookie is just too fast for them, and the traps
they set for him misfire – until the two friends figure out a way to use the
inedible porridge to stop him in his tracks. They quickly assure the
Gingerbread Man that they do not want to eat him – they just want him to clean
up the mess he made. He apologizes and does just that – and then shows them how
they can make perfect porridge after all. So the book ends with three friends,
not just two, all of them enjoying porridge and sharing it with a bird, bear,
squirrel, pig and dragon. Might as well get all those fairy-tale types in
there! Joey Chou’s gently rounded illustrations are a big part of this book’s
attraction (and a big contrast with Wasson’s in his book). There are plenty of
other fairy tales out there, and B. Bear and Lolly seem sure to return to mix
and stir up more of them.

Mixing and stirring, and
friendship, are prime ingredients in Freddy
and Frito and the Clubhouse Rules as well. Freddy, a fox, and Frito, a very
large mouse (or perhaps an endearingly drawn rat), are best friends with a
problem: each enjoys playing at the other’s house, but their respective parents
make too many rules, interfering with the friends’ enjoyment of Jumping Jelly
Beans, Rock Star Pirates and other games they have invented. So Freddy and
Frito decide to create a place of their own, where there will be no rules at
all: a treehouse, which they furnish with many of their favorite things. Or try to furnish: it soon turns out that
Freddy does not like some of Frito’s stuff, and Frito does not like some of
Freddy’s things, and everything is crowded and headache-inducing and smelly and
just no good. The friends quarrel and run home to their families, but then
decide the thing to do is to make the clubhouse bigger, so everything will fit
and both of them will have places for whatever they want. Freddy and Frito are
so excited after expanding their just-for-them place that they decide on a grand-opening
celebration for the tree house, inviting lots of family members – and Alison
Friend’s illustration of the grand-opening scene is so big that kids have to
turn the book sideways to see everything that is going on. In fact, though,
some of what is happening is not to Freddy and Frito’s liking, and they start
to realize that it makes sense to have some
rules after all. This is where the mixing and stirring come in: to get the
guests to go home and stop messing everything up, Freddy and Frito prepare a
“special dinner” consisting of pond water, an old shoe, a dead fish, and some
moldy cheese. Sure enough, the smell of the stinky stew leads everyone to
decide to go somewhere else for supper – giving Freddy and Frito the time and
space they need to clean up, calm down, relax for a while, and create “the only
rule they needed,” which is simply, “Freddy + Frito RULE!” Freddy and Frito and the Clubhouse Rules is a well-told story with
more complexity than is often found in books for this age group. And the
drawings of the friends, their families, and the unintentional (and
intentional) messes that everyone makes all fit the tale and characters
exceptionally well – not only in the bigger events but also in the smaller
ones, such as a scene showing a “shortsighted neighbor” (a mole) taking a bath
in a cooking pot that he has mistaken for a bathtub. Friendship, family,
frustration and fun: Freddy and Frito and
the Clubhouse Rules has them all.

It is the bane of every
scientist, every researcher: the eager journalist, blogger, or other
non-scientist who is so excited about
that new study that proves Phases of the
Moon Cause Cancer! Or Eating a Pound
of Blueberries a Day Keeps You Alive for 200 Years! Or Drinking Wine Protects Your Liver!

Or, more seriously: eating
eggs will raise your cholesterol…too much salt endangers your heart…blood
pressure above 140/90 is an invitation to cardiovascular disease and early
death.

The first three correlations
are ludicrous, and it is hard to imagine anyone believing them. But the second,
reasonable-seeming three are no more believable – and in fact, scientists have
recently reversed these supposed “scientific discoveries,” saying that eggs and
other foods are not major culprits in too-high cholesterol; too little salt may be a bigger danger than
too much; and systolic blood pressure in the 150 range is probably just fine
and does not require the lifetime medication that doctors prescribed to so many
people under the 140/90 standard.

There is no evil conspiracy
behind this sort of scientific study and re-study, determination and
re-determination.And it is perfectly
fine to scoff at ill-reported findings that say high calcium intake causes eye
disease, heartburn causes esophageal or stomach cancer, and red wine keeps you
alive longer. Virtually all reporting outside scientific journals falls victim,
through ignorance and/or space limitations, to the confusion of correlation and
causation.

To put it simply: just because two things
are both observed in people or in life in general, that does not mean one of
them causes the other. People who take large amounts of calcium supplements are
indeed more likely to have advanced macular degeneration, a serious eye
disease, in later life – which could mean that they have a systemic condition
or genetic predisposition to the eye disease and just happen to be calcium
users; it does not mean that calcium causes the disease. Heartburn is sometimes
seen in people with esophageal or stomach cancer, but most heartburn is simply
a symptom of gastroesophageal reflux disease, and heartburn does not cause
cancer. There is a correlation between drinking red wine in moderation and
longer life in some people – but their overall lifestyle may be what leads them
both to drink the wine and to have longer lives. Correlation Does Not Equal Causation, as the subtitle of Tyler
Vigen’s book states.

Indeed, as the book’s title states, it is extremely easy to
find Spurious Correlations –
apparently connected events or circumstances that have absolutely nothing to do
with each other. Some of these are so well-known that they have passed into
common parlance in their fields: the hemline indicator and Super Bowl indicator
are well-known on Wall Street, for example, each of them supposedly predicting
the future direction of the stock market (based, respectively, on the length of
women’s dresses and whether a team from the old AFL or original NFL – or, in a
variant, a team from the current AFC or NFC – wins the Super Bowl). Interestingly,
traders scoff at these correlations but sometimes also weave elaborate stories
to explain how they might, just might, have a grain of truth in them. These
specific items are not in Vigen’s book, but he does produce a graph showing an
81.4% correlation between closing values of the New York Stock Exchange
Composite Index from 2004 to 2011 and the ranking of the TV program Two and a Half Men against that of other
CBS shows.

There is not even a micro-grain
of veracity in the correlations that Vigen has dug up for his book – but they
are so amusing that Spurious Correlations
manages both to teach a matter of genuine importance and to insist that readers
laugh about it. Vigen’s approach is a wonderful one: he provides graphs that
show eerily parallel patterns between entirely unrelated sets of data – graphs
that seem to prove that one thing causes the other, or at the very least is
intimately related to it, when in fact they prove absolutely nothing. Thus,
there is a definite correlation between cheese consumption in the United States
between 2000 and 2009 and the number of people who died by becoming tangled in
bedsheets during the same period – the graph shows it with 94.7% correlation.
And margarine consumption during the same decade is even more clearly
correlated with the divorce rate in the state of Maine: a 98.9% correlation. Also
– oh my – there was 96.4% correlation between E-mail spam and the use of
genetically engineered soybeans between 2001 and 2010. Quick! Someone pass a
law!And let’s boost our competitiveness
in information technology by making graduate school free for comic-book
readers: there was 99.5% correlation between computer-science doctorates and
comic-book sales between 2003 and 2009.

Vigen’s charts are highly
amusing – and they are also highly instructive. There are so many statistics
available about so many things that finding correlations between unrelated
events is just a matter of doing a well-directed search. Then, to show those
correlations clearly enough to imply causation, be sure to choose the right
scale for your graph (Y axis) and the right time period (X axis). This is
exactly what Vigen does – but other people do the same thing for far less
humor-inducing reasons. Politicians and issue advocates are experts at
manipulating statistics to try to make people think there is causation when
there is only correlation: debates about everything from illegal immigration to
abortion are filled with manipulation of this sort. And even when correlation
and causation are confused only through ignorance or space limitations, rather
than through malice, there are serious consequences. Journalistic credibility,
to the extent that that phrase still means anything, is seriously damaged by
stories reporting that A leads to B when the research says only that A and B
both occur under the same specific circumstances or in the same group of
people. Scientific literacy, to the extent that that phrase still has meaning, is badly undermined by widely
disseminated reports that lead people to believe some important causality has
been discovered, when all that has really been found is an interesting
correlation.

Vigen clearly intends Spurious Correlations as a humor book,
giving his graphs amusing headlines: “Save the planet! Knock down the old
bridges!” “A ltr 4 u.” “Beer always makes basketball better.” “Money doesn’t
grow on trees, unless that money is for bingo and those trees are houseplants.”
So by all means laugh at the absurdity of the unconnected connections that he
offers on page after page. There is, indeed, causation here: many of these
graphs will certainly elicit amusement. But remember that this book has
appeared at a time when more people than ever are ignorantly sounding off on
the Internet and elsewhere about all the causes of all the terrible things
happening in the world. That is only a correlation – right?

When the Earth Shakes:
Earthquakes, Volcanoes, and Tsunamis. By Simon Winchester. Viking. $18.99.

There have been many books
for young people about the wonders of the world, about how nature works, about
the amazing and sometimes frightening things that occur regularly on our
planet; and there have been plenty of profiles of the scientists who study these
things, try to make sense of them, and help (in the case of natural disasters)
to predict dire events and restore order after they occur. Simon Winchester’s When the Earth Shakes, for ages 10-14,
is similar to these books, but it is different, too, for it is a highly
personal account of natural disasters by someone whose primary role is that of
journalist – someone who takes readers where he has himself gone to explore the
wonders and fearful power of geological forces.

It is not until his Afterword
that Winchester states explicitly what is implicit throughout his narrative:
“Each of these activities [earthquakes, volcanoes, and tsunamis] happens as a
normal part of the functioning of planet Earth. …Part of being a responsible
custodian of our planetary resources must also include a respect for the way
the planet itself operates.” Everything in the book revolves around this: the
enormous human cost of natural disasters must be set against the reality that
these are natural events, ones
endemic to Earth and ones that will occur again and again, as they have been
occurring for millennia beyond count. We humans live as if Earth is stable –
even those who live in unstable parts of the world do this, such as those along
the San Andreas Fault in California and around the Ring of Fire in the Pacific.
But the planet is inherently unstable: what appears otherwise “over time…cannot
and will not last.”

When Earth shrugs, when
natural events intersect with human life, it is human life that is bound to be lost.
It may be the 185 lives lost in February 2011 in an earthquake in Christchurch,
New Zealand, or the 57 who died when Mount St. Helens erupted in 1980, or the
40,000 killed when Krakatoa blew itself to smithereens in 1883, or the 230,000
who lost their lives in the 2004 Sumatra-Andaman Tsunami. These lives are huge
to us humans but insignificant to a planet that is unaware of them and that
dances to its own tune. Indeed, Winchester shows that plate tectonics, which
are responsible for many of the most frightening and dramatic natural
disasters, really are a sort of dance, with molten rock below the Earth’s
surface causing 15 huge, solid plates and about 50 smaller ones to move slowly,
constantly and steadily.

Winchester expertly mixes
his personal experiences and knowledge with scientific explanations,
photographs both modern and historical, and highly informative graphics – one
of which, for example, shows where all 15 of Earth’s major plates lie. He
explains the Richter scale and volcanic explosivity index, discusses (and shows
in photos) the devastation of the 2011 tsunami in Japan (contrasting its
horrific effects with the grandeur of the famous Hokusai painting of a great
wave), briefly and tellingly profiles a couple of the victims of the Mount St.
Helens eruption, mentions the heroic and unnamed telegraph operator who died
immediately after telling the world in Morse code about the Krakatoa eruption, and
is generally very effective in meshing the small, human and personal stories occurring
in the course of gigantic natural disasters with a discussion of the scientific
study and understanding of what occurs.

When the Earth Shakes is part of a series created in collaboration
with, and using information from, the Smithsonian Institution. This is what
gives the book much of its scientific gravitas. What comes through, page after page and photograph after
photograph, is the astounding power lying just beneath our feet and bursting
through again and again, always unpredictably despite increasingly
sophisticated efforts to anticipate (if not control) its effects. What also
comes through is the resilience of human beings affected by these disasters –
not individually, perhaps, but collectively: the refusal to give in to Nature’s
might despite the fact that humans are grossly overmatched when it comes to
events that are literally earthshaking. Winchester is at his best when
describing, first, what people saw and experienced during horrendous natural
disasters; and, second, how they responded afterwards. His comments on Japan
after the March 2011 tsunami are particularly telling – he notes that the
Japanese “did not give up in the face of nature’s onslaught. They did not wait
for government to help. …They rationed food and medicine, found fresh water,
repaired roads, cleared debris and sorted it into neat piles, reopened schools
with volunteer teachers, and kept the children amused and as content as
possible. The spirit of Japan in the face of a tsunami catastrophe is something
that disaster planners all around the world have come to admire and hope that
their own communities might use as a model.” In the final analysis, it is the
contrast between what is awe-inspiring and fear-inspiring in nature and what is
admirable and determined in humans that makes When the Earth Shakes a book that fascinatingly balances the nearly
unlimited potency of the forces that shape Earth with the indomitability of the
human spirit – although not of individual humans – confronted by that
overwhelming power.

Solo and small-ensemble
works, both classics and contemporary, have their own form of communicative
expressiveness, inviting listeners into a more intimate relationship with the
performers than larger-scale pieces usually do. Orli Shaham’s highly personal Brahms Inspired recording is even more
strongly personal than solo recitals usually are. Shaham’s two-CD Canary
Classics release explores late Brahms piano music in juxtaposition with works
that inspired Brahms and ones – including three world première recordings – that were inspired
by him. The way in which Shaham mixes and matches the pieces is noteworthy. The
first CD starts with Brahms’ six piano pieces from Op. 118, to which Shaham brings
vigor, delicacy and a rather old-fashioned willingness to employ rubato – at times a touch more than
needed to make these works fully effective. She does especially well in
capturing the ardor of the Intermezzo in F minor, brings nobility to the
Romanze in F, and nicely controls the concluding Intermezzo in E-flat minor,
with its Dies Irae quotations. Shaham
follows this with My Inner Brahms (an
intermezzo) by Bruce Adolphe (born 1955), which takes off from Brahms’; Op.
118, No. 6, and gives it a decidedly dissonant slant. Next is Schubert’s Impromptu, Op. 90, No. 3, handled in
no-nonsense fashion; then Schumann’s Romanze,
Op. 28, No. 2, played reflectively and thoughtfully; and, next, Chopin’s Berceuse, Op. 57, a lullaby here
performed very affectingly. Then Shaham turns back to Brahms to conclude the
first disc with Three Intermezzi, Op.
117, effectively “bookending” the CD with expansive readings that parallel
her handling of Op. 118 at the disc’s beginning. The second CD opens with After Brahms – 3 Intermezzos for Piano
by Avner Dorman (born 1975). The first of these turns Brahms’ Op. 118, No. 1
into a more-chromatic work; the second adds a bluesy feel to Brahms’ Op. 119,
No. 1; and the third and most interesting is wholly original, starting as simply
as Brahms might have and building gradually in complexity and with some distinctly
non-Brahmsian dissonance. Shaham follows this with a rather unfortunate reading
of Bach’s Partita No. 1, which she
handles with Romantic-era rubato that
may be intended to show parallels with Brahms but that does not match the music
very well. The next piece, though, is as elegant and poised as can be, and very
effective as a result: Sechs kleine
Klavierstücke by Schoenberg, a great admirer of Brahms. The final work
on this disc is actually two interwoven compositions: Brahms’ six-movement Op.
119 pieces with Hommage à
Brahms für Klavier by Brett Dean (born 1961), which was specifically
written to be performed within
Brahms’ Op. 119. This is an audacious move by Dean, leading to a seven-movement
dual-composer work in which Dean’s pieces are the second, fourth and sixth. The
first and third of Dean’s pieces are called Engelsflügel
(“Angel Wings”) 1 and 2, while the second Dean piece is decidedly more earthy
and is called Hafenkneipenmusik
(“Harbor Pubs Music”). Dean comments on and contrasts with the four Brahms
pieces, and the full seven-movement work that results certainly expands upon
Brahms’ original and broadens what it has to say. But even in Shaham’s able
hands and with her sensitivity to the music, the totality seems more like a
gimmick than a fully realized interpretation or reinterpretation of Brahms. Taken
as a whole, the disparate yet related pieces on this fascinating release are
not all of equal interest, but the material by Brahms himself is very well
performed, and Shaham does manage to shed light interestingly on a number of
Brahms’ influences and influencers – just as this collection intends to do.

There is expressiveness of a
different sort, more straightforward and in some ways more immediately
appealing, on a new MSR Classics recording of the complete wind-and-piano music
by Francis Poulenc (1899-1963). This is witty and well-written music, more
effective in the main than are Poulenc’s chamber works for strings, for which
he did not write particularly well. These seven pieces span much of Poulenc’s
career and provide some fascinating stylistic contrasts. Trio for Oboe, Bassoon, and Piano dates to 1926 and is rather mischievous.Sextet
for Flute, Oboe, Clarinet, Bassoon, French Horn and Piano is from 1932
(revised 1939-40) and is similarly lighthearted, although there is greater
expansiveness here – especially in the first movement – and some very effective
contrasting writing for individual instruments as well as the ensemble. The
other major works on this very well-played CD are considerably later: Sonata for Flute and Piano dates to
1956-57, Sonata for Clarinet and Piano
to 1962, and Sonata for Oboe and Piano
also to 1962. There is more beauty, more sense of looking inward, and a greater
exploration of the technical capabilities of the wind instruments in these
works than in the earlier ones. They retain the fluidity and fluency of
Poulenc’s earlier compositions for winds, but they expand it into new realms of
expressiveness and technical challenge. Also on this CD are a very short Villanelle for Piccolo and Piano, a kind
of miniature intermezzo, and a moving Elegy
for French Horn and Piano that was written in 1957 in memory of justly
famous horn player Dennis Brain (1921-1957), who had recently died in a car
crash. A distinguishing feature of this heartfelt work is that it contains a
rare-for-Poulenc use of a Schoenbergian tone row. The Iowa Ensemble makes all
this music highly attractive, and the contrasts among the pieces themselves
make the disc as a whole a fascinating one to which to listen.

The Fire Pink Trio plays
exceptionally well, too, on a new MSR Classics CD entitled Poetry in Motion, but most of the music here is of somewhat less
interest – although the CD still deserves a high rating for its sheer
exuberance, its willingness to juxtapose interestingly related pieces, and the
delightful and infrequently heard sound of an hour of music for the unusual combination
of flute, viola and harp. Debussy’s 1913 Sonata
is, not surprisingly, the highlight of the disc, its three movements showing
the composer’s ever-present sensitivity and its patterns being typical of his
late style. It flows now sinuously, now resolutely, and gives the players many
opportunities to showcase themselves individually while producing expressive
ensemble sections. Two five-movement suites by contemporary composers bracket
the Debussy, which has the central position on the CD. These works are less
fully integrated then Debussy’s, but they feature nicely contrasted movements
and mostly successful forays into music outside the traditional classical
realm. Dream Steps – A Dance Suite
(1993) by Dan Locklair (born 1949) has a bluesy central movement and opening
and closing movements that both include barcaroles. The scoring is attractive
and the pacing winning. Suite Popular
Española (1985) by Manuel Moreno-Buendia (born 1932) is a more
old-fashioned collection of short dancelike movements that have enough Spanish
flair to provide both performers and listeners with considerable enjoyment of
their rhythmic features. The CD opens and closes with shorter contemporary
works that are pleasant but less immediately appealing than those by Locklair
and Moreno-Buendia – although each of them has engaging moments and uses the
instruments cleverly. Doppler Effect
(1998) by Adrienne Albert (born 1941) is the curtain-raiser here, while Cruisin’ with the Top Down (2000) by
Sonny Burnette (born 1952) provides a suitably enjoyable conclusion to an
off-the-beaten-track recording that hits a number of high points and more than
a few high notes.

Another MSR Classics
release, featuring the chamber music of Peter Lieuwen, is somewhat less engaging,
although here too there are interesting moments within all four works – all
receiving world première
recordings. Lieuwen’s music tends to have familiar inspirations, including
nature and legends, and like that of many other contemporary composers, it
reaches beyond traditional classical roots into jazz and non-Western music.
Lieuwen is also a fan of minimalism, which at this point is a rather tired
technique; but thankfully he does combine it with other compositional
approaches rather than employing it in reasonably pure form. Lieuwen has his
own approach to the traditional conversational nature of chamber music,
expanding that conversation so that it occurs not only among the musicians but
also between the players and the audience. He essentially invites listeners to
make up their own narrative (or forgo narrative altogether) when hearing his
music, while at the same time he challenges the performers’ technical
abilities. The result can be intriguing but can also come across as somewhat
dry and studied, as it often does in this (+++) recording. Lieuwen does not so
much put drama into his music as invite players to find it and listeners to
discover it – a reasonable enough position if the music seems to have
considerable depth to it. But by and large, the works here are on the
straightforward side and do not evoke any particularly deep emotional
resonance. The most interesting aspect of the recording is the way in which
Lieuwen writes for four different sets of instruments. Sonata for Guitar (2009) is a virtuosic solo work (played here by
Isaac Bustos) in the traditional three movements but with decidedly
untraditional sound. Rhapsody for Violin
and Piano (2013), performed by violinist Andrzej Grabiec and pianist
Timothy Hester, is a somewhat over-extended duo that seems to meander rather
than head anywhere in particular. Overland
Dream (2011) requires four players: clarinet, violin, cello and piano. The
SOLI Chamber Ensemble handles it nicely, and the clarinet writing, in
particular, has some attractive elements. Windjammer
(2009) needs the most performers among the works here, being for woodwind
quintet. The Cumberland Wind Quintet takes its measure effectively, but here
the blending of instruments seems more on the competitive than cooperative
side, and the actual sound of the music can be off-putting. Hearing one or two
works by Lieuwen on a CD might result in a better listening experience than
hearing four – at least these four.

There are four contemporary
composers represented by one work apiece on a new Naxos CD featuring music by
Canadian musicians – and here too there are some interesting and attractive
elements, but also some that tend to drag or that simply seem to be trying too
hard. The Gryphon Trio commissioned all these works, all of which are world
première recordings. The most
interesting of them is Letters to the
Immortal Beloved (2012) by James K. Wright (born 1959). The three pieces,
sung by mezzo-soprano Julie Nesrallah, are attempts to delve emotionally into
Beethoven’s relationship with his Immortal Beloved, the still-unknown woman to
whom he wrote passionately in 1812. Taking extended excerpts from Beethoven’s
prose as its basis, the work explores the composer’s intense longing and
becomes a codicil of sorts to the mystery still surrounding the woman to whom
Beethoven wrote – although it is a touch odd to have these passionate words
sung by a female performer. A tribute of another sort is Centennials (2012) by Michael Oesterle (born 1968). This piece’s
three movements mark what would have been the 100th-birthday year of
three very different people: chef Julia Child, American composer Conlon
Noncarrow, and painter Jackson Pollock. The pieces are best heard as homages
rather than direct attempts to reflect the work and lives of the people whose
names they bear. Also here is the intriguingly titled These Begin to Catch Fire (2012) by Brian Current (born 1972). This
is a sun-focused tone poem inspired by sunlight patterns on Lake Muskoka in
Ontario – a kind of miniature version of Carl Nielsen’s Helios Overture, but written for much more modest forces and
accordingly making its impression with greater delicacy and less sense of
brilliance and grandeur. The fourth piece here is also sun-related in a way: Solstice Songs (2011) by Andrew
Staniland (born 1977). Despite the title, there are no words here – the
three-movement work is intended to evoke the passage of time through purely
instrumental means, its first and longest movement flowing in almost congealed
fashion, its second a brief Interlude,
and its third a brighter, almost perky conclusion. The Gryphon Trio members
throw themselves into all these works with enthusiasm, and it is fair to say
that these performances are as close to definitive as any reading is likely to
be. However, the CD is, as a whole, rather uneven and disconnected, with parts
of each work more involving than other sections and with the four works
themselves having little to tie them together musically except for the fact
that the Gryphon Trio commissioned them all. In its totality, this is a (+++)
recording that will, however, be of particular interest to listeners who want
to familiarize themselves with some of the music of contemporary Canadian
composers.

The decade of the Roaring
Twenties in the United States and the Weimar Republic in Germany was one of
tremendous musical as well as social ferment. One central trend was the
increasing seriousness of operetta, which had been largely fluff and nonsense
in the years leading up to World War I. Leading the push to give operetta some
of the heft of Puccinian opera was Puccini’s friend and colleague, Franz Lehár, who in this decade produced Paganini (1925), his first collaboration
with tenor Richard Tauber, and then Der
Zarewitsch (1926), Friederike
(1928), and Das Land des Lächelns
(1929), all of them bittersweet works with ambiguous and pathos-drenched
endings, all of them reflective of a darker and less frothy world than that
portrayed in Die lustige Witwe and Der Graf von Luxemburg.

In the United States, where
there was little tradition of homegrown operetta despite the contributions to
the form by John Philip Sousa, darker and more-serious themes emerged on
Broadway, led in large part by Show Boat
(1927), whose handling of racial prejudice and poignant love stories – all
taken from Edna Ferber’s novel – offered a level of seriousness that was as new
to the Ziegfeld Theater in New York as Lehár’s important 1920s works were to Vienna’s Johann Strauß-Theater
and Berlin’s Deutsches Künstlertheater and Metropol Theater.

Show Boat paved the way for many musicals that later handled
complex and difficult themes, such as South
Pacific. And it is certainly arguable that a work like Show Boat gets its full due only in a full-scale operatic
production like that delivered by the San Francisco Opera and now available on
a EuroArts DVD.Indeed, the leitmotif of the river’s theme, so
memorably captured in that most classic of Broadway songs, Ol’ Man River, recurs so frequently, tying so many strands of the
plot together, that the overall feeling of Show
Boat is distinctly operatic – especially when a full orchestra performs the
music, as it does here.

What works beautifully in
this production is that orchestra, led by John DeMain with enthusiasm,
involvement, majesty and rich musical color. What works are the sprawling sets
created by Peter J. Davison, along with perspective-bending stage pieces that
contain the action while at the same time framing and focusing it. What works
are Paul Tazewell’s bright and attractive costumes, many of them in red, white,
and blue, emphasizing that this is a quintessentially American story.

What works rather less well
is Michele Lynch’s choreography: there is a lot of dancing here, but after a
while the steps and patterns start to seem repetitious, no matter how
enthusiastically the San Francisco Opera Dance Corps performs them. As for the
overall direction by stage director Francesca Zambello, it is solid and
generally lively, making for fine entertainment. The solos, ensembles, and
larger choral scenes generally mesh well, as is important for the dramatic
effect of Show Boat. The splashiness
seems overdone at times, almost veering into triviality here and there, but
that is arguably an effective way to prevent the production from becoming too
gloomy – even if the approach creaks a bit.

The singing and acting here
are where matters do creak. There is
considerable dialogue in Show Boat,
as in the operetta form and the Singspiel
before it – but here the area mikes used to amplify the words do their job with
varying levels of effectiveness. The miking is not a benefit to the singing, either.
Bass Morris Robinson, the emotional heart of the work, brings barely controlled
anger and a deeply moving sense of acceptance with forbearance to Ol’ Man River, making the river’s
indifference to the petty fates of those plying their trade upon its waters the
anchor of the entire production. And baritone Michael Todd Simpson, whose role
is normally sung by a tenor, makes a fine flawed hero, his voice firm and full
and melding elements of operatic and Broadway style, his untrustworthy
character both realistic and overdone in an appealing way. Also highly engaging
is Angela Renée Simpson,
notably when singing Mis’ry’s Comin’
Aroun’.

Other singers, though, are
not at this level. Patricia Racette is disappointing as Julie, victimized by a
charge of miscegenation: her two big numbers, Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man in Act I and Bill in Act II, are stiffly sung and have far too much vibrato.
Kirsten Wyatt as Ellie Mae Chipley is too far on the lighthearted side to be
fully effective. And as Magnolia Hawks, Heidi Stober projects a remote, almost
chilly personality, and her acting is more posed than poised – she is distanced
from the other characters and thus from the audience.

The chance to see Show Boat performed in an operatic
setting by a first-class American opera troupe is a welcome one, and the
gravitas of the show’s themes is certainly communicated well in this production
– although the DVD’s bow to political correctness in a note that “this
production contains occasional explicit racial language” is simply dumb. Half
an hour of interviews with performers is included on the recording, making for
a thorough vision both of Show Boat
as a stage work and Show Boat as a period
piece that nevertheless speaks to concerns that have persisted into the 21st
century. This is a substantial work that showed how far Broadway could go in
exploring significant societal issues if it so chose. Like Lehár’s later operettas, it brought
depth to a field that had almost always been pleasantly shallow before: it
seems altogether fitting that the primary image of Show Boat is that of an ancient and powerful, if ultimately
indifferent, river.

June 18, 2015

Galaxy’s Most Wanted #1. By
John Kloepfer. Illustrated by Nick Edwards. Harper. $6.99.

Galaxy’s Most Wanted #2: Into the
Dorkness. By John Kloepfer. Illustrated by Nick Edwards. Harper. $12.99.

Another day, another
world-threatened-by-aliens situation. So it goes at Northwest Horizons Science
Camp, where Kevin Brewer, Warner Reed, TJ Boyd and Tara Swift encounter and
must cope with various reptilian and/or four-eyed and/or fuzzy and/or tentacled
and/or blobbish beings and keep Earth safe for Earthlings. Hence the naming of
this redoubtable quartet as the Extraordinary Terrestrials (ETs – get it?). And
hence the plot of John Kloepfer’s Galaxy’s
Most Wanted series for ages 8-12, whose first entry appeared last year and
is now available in paperback, and whose second hardcover offering is
brand-new. That is, the book is new,
but the plot, like that of the first entry, is an old one. Galaxy’s Most Wanted starts as a standard preteen group of
not-very-distinguished and not-very-distinguishable friends makes contact with
actual alien life and gets to meet an actual alien named Mim, who is cute and
purple and fuzzy and four-eyed (literally
four-eyed; this has nothing to do with wearing eyeglasses). But Mim tells the
kids he is in trouble because of some galactic baddies who are after him, so
the Earth kids have to hide him (they have him put on a hoodie) and help him.
Soon enough, a pursuer shows up, yelling “‘Gluck-gluck-Mim-yim-yarkle’” and
being as scary as only a giant extraterrestrial insect can be. Mim explains
that the “space poachers” are after his entire species, “hunting us down and
killing us for our fur so they can make coats out of us. It can get really cold
in outer space.” So now the kids really
need to help Mim, and they do a pretty darned good job of it, too, until they
begin suspecting that maybe Mim is not telling them the whole truth, as in
maybe not even 1% of it – and soon there are issues involving positron force
fields, a “half-cyborg ET tracker,” a holographic rap sheet, a giant spiderish
thing named Poobah, and all sorts of other nonsensical goodies that will
undoubtedly delight preteen readers who are tired of earthbound zombies (like
the ones in Kloepfer’s Zombie Chasers series)
and looking for alternative amusements. This first book is neatly summed up at
the start of the second: “Over the course of a few days, they had summoned the
galaxy’s most wanted alien, a purple fuzzy creature named Mim with an appetite
for destruction, fought off a giant arachnopod – a humongous half octopus, half
tarantula – and saved the world from annihilation.”

But life can’t be that easy (well,
all that world-saving seems easy) in
a series like this. So, having set up the basic premise of Galaxy’s Most Wanted in the first book, Kloepfer – abetted by Nick
Edwards’ illustrations, which do little to add to the action but certainly
nothing to detract from it – brings the kids up against different alien bad
guys in Into the Dorkness. This time
Mim’s associates show up, set off a freeze-ray bomb, and learn about the heroic
foursome because of tattletale “Alexander Russ, Kevin’s longtime science camp
nemesis,” who is a “nerd bully.” Then the Extraordinary Terrestrials,
accompanied by alien space cop Klyk (who looks like a toy and for a while
pretends to be one), get together with a soccer-camp girl named Marcy – who happens
to be a big fan of Max Greyson comics, which happen to contain some important
clues to what is going on all around the intrepid preteens. Soon there are
encounters with a brainwashed camp counselor and a swarm of robotic wasps that
inject nanotech-based mind-control serum into their victims. And in case that
is not enough drama and utter ridiculousness, the wasps inject the serum into
“the entire all-girls soccer camp,” after which all the girls resemble the
zombies in Kloepfer’s other current
series, just to be sure kids get enough of a dose of Type A so they will also
enjoy Type B (or, in the case of zombies, Type AB – or is that vampires?). There
are occasional funny lines here: “You don’t seriously think humans invented
Google, do you?” But by and large, both the action and the writing are quite
straightforward and very much in line with the easy-to-follow, easy-to-read
formula of series like this, in which the characters are virtually identical
and the plots are packed with just enough fun to keep preteens reading. Into the Dorkness includes a chase scene
in which Warner’s video-game capabilities help him steer an alien spaceship to
victory – and, more interestingly, a search for the aforementioned Max Greyson,
during which it turns out that the cartoonist disappeared a year and a half
ago, but “‘Max’s comics have continued to be delivered even after his
disappearance,’” as his former assistant explains. The assistant continues,
“‘I’m pretty sure he was abducted by aliens. But I’m not supposed to talk about
that. Every time I start talking about it, it just seems so unreasonable.’
‘You’d be surprised how reasonable it sounds to us,’ said Kevin.” And there you
have it: the intricacies (if that is the right word) of the plot of the second
book, and also the setup for what will become the third. Galaxy’s Most Wanted is harmless, lighthearted (and lightheaded)
entertainment, especially suitable for young readers who are thrilled by
dialogue such as, from the first book, “‘Umm, hey, nimrods… There’s kind of
more important stuff going on here than the Invention Convention. Like saving
the world.’” And, from the second, “‘They’ve just taken over Oregon and pretty
soon the entire planet!’”

When Kids Call the Shots: How to
Seize Control from Your Darling Bully—and Enjoy Being a Parent Again. By
Sean Grover, LCSW. AMACOM. $15.

Today’s parent-child
dynamic, many people argue, is out of balance, with some parents
“helicoptering” above their kids at all times and supervising their every move,
while others take a hands-off approach that leads to kids without any sense of
personal or social responsibility, much less morals or ethics. Into the fray of
this discussion comes psychotherapist Sean Grover with something else to worry
about: circumstances in which matters are so far unbalanced that kids, not
parents, are in charge of family dynamics, bullying and even oppressing adults
in ways that are highly detrimental to older and younger alike.

Grover is not quite sure
whether he wants to call bullied parents to arms or sit them down for some tea
and a nice chat. In a section on parental burnout, he makes comments that apply
to the book as a whole: “This book is meant to challenge you, to start a
revolution in your parenting and empower you. Its ultimate goal is to end
bullying in your household. But before we can do that, I’m going to need you to
take better care of yourself. Standing up to your kid’s bullying will require
more energy and stamina, both of which are impossible to master when you’re
burned out. …It will be impossible to transform your relationship with your kid
unless you transform your relationship with yourself.” So, overstressed and
overworked parents whose kids take constant advantage of them: here’s one more
thing for your ever-growing list of must-dos. Four more things, actually: put
time aside for yourself, exercise more, find ways to express your inner
creativity, and take a break from your kids to go out of town or otherwise make
time for adult friendships and activities.

Whatever the merits of these
suggestions may be, they are likely to come across as additional burdens to
parents who are already so time-pressed and stressed by work and home life that
they have allowed their kids to take control. Or perhaps “allowed” is not quite
the right word. Grover himself seems to think bullying by children is normal,
as in his comment about an instance of it involving his own child: “My daughter
had every right to bully. She’s a kid, and that’s what kids do. The problem was
my reaction to her bullying.” This is, at best, arguable. Yes, parental
reaction to children’s behavior is always an issue, but whether bullying is
simply “what kids do” is by no means self-evident. Nor is Grover’s simplistic
assessment, again using himself as an example, of ways to control kids’ demands
that reach the level of bullying: “If I wanted her to be more patient, I had to
be more patient. If I wanted her to be more mindful, I had to lead the way.” Furthermore,
Grover significantly undermines his own claim to analytical expertise when he
marvels at his discovery that the underlying reason for his own daughter’s
unacceptable behavior is nothing more unusual than sibling rivalry: his
daughter is jealous of and in competition with her recently arrived
parental-time-hogging baby sister.

The fact that this “revelation”
will be a “well, duh” moment for many parents shows that the reasons for kids’
behavior are by no means as difficult to fathom – at least in many cases – as
Grover considers them to be. Nor is it necessary, to benefit from this
book,to accept his self-congratulation
in the form of self-abnegation when he mentions that he is “a therapist who
works with children, who leads parenting workshops, publishes parenting
articles – and I [didn’t] have a clue what to do with my own kid!” For there is
certainly material here from which readers can benefit. Grover says that
children have several different “bullying styles” and that understanding them
is one step required in dealing with them. Kids, he writes, may be defiant
(“in-your-face” and “exceedingly confrontational and oppositional”), anxious
(tending to “oscillate between clinging to their parents and pushing them
away”), or manipulative (“extort[ing] his wants and needs from his parents by
preying on their anxieties and generating self-doubt”). In addition, certain
types of parents are more likely to be bullied: those who are guilty,
anxious or determined to fix everything. Grover explains what each
child-bullying style may mean and how it may interact with each parenting style
– and then makes suggestions, based on case histories, of ways to improve
family dynamics and move beyond bullying to better communication and improved
relationships.

It will come as no surprise
that the one most-recurrent recommendation from Grover is to go into therapy –
sometimes individual, sometimes as a family, sometimes on a parent-and-child
basis. Other suggestions involve fundamentally remaking the adult relationship
that allows bullying by children to gain a foothold – for example, at one point
Grover says, “Edward needs to step back and allow his wife to share more
parenting responsibilities. …Edward’s doting…shuts out his wife and creates an
imbalance in the parenting Teddy receives.” Unfortunately, as is always the
case in self-help books that try to address deep-seated and complex interpersonal
issues in a couple of hundred simplistic pages, Grover’s counsel is far, far
easier to give than it is for parents to act upon. And the fact that it is
given so matter-of-factly, even glibly, makes it all the more difficult for
parents to try to follow it. By the time Grover announces a chapter in which
“I’m going to give you the essential tools for undoing bullying behaviors and
restoring balance in your relationship,” parents will likely feel so swamped by
the analyses and action points in When Kids
Call the Shots that they will have little ability to understand, much less
accept, what Grover presents. What that is boils down to three steps that sound
good but are enormously, overwhelmingly difficult to implement in the real
world: “1. Stick to your vision. 2. Tale responsibility for your behavior. 3.
Manage your feelings.” Certainly these are worthy goals, and certainly they are
clearly presented here. But Grover is simply too dogmatic, and often too
emphatic, for parents depressed, repressed and suppressed by family life and
the rest of everyday living to be able to tackle many of these notions: “STOP
Relying on Faulty Coping Mechanisms and START Standing Up for Yourself,” for
example.

The book also has some
irritating errors in the writing and/or editing: “Let’s delve into Dorothy’s
pasts [sic],” for example, and
“Abandoned by her mother, her Grandma Pat was Dorothy’s only family” (which
says that Grandma Pat was the one abandoned, which is not what Grover means).
Also, to cite another example in this single section, Grover – who has
certainly changed all names of people he writes about and/or created composite
case histories – unaccountably omits what would clearly be something crucial to
understanding the situation: “Dorothy’s one brief romantic relationship (too
awkward to describe here) produced Stewart.” Describing, explaining and dealing
with awkward matters is, after all, supposed to be a major point of When Kids Call the Shots.

There is much trenchant
analysis in this book, and there are
many good ideas about handling serious imbalances in parent-child
relationships. But there is little if any acknowledgment of just how difficult
it is to make fundamental, foundational changes in one’s marriage or
partnership and, indeed, in one’s entire way of interacting with the whole
world. Ultimately, what is missing in When
Kids Call the Shots, despite Grover’s attempt to say he himself has “been
there, done that,” is a dose of empathy sufficient to make some extremely
difficult prescriptions seem positive and worthwhile, even if distinctly unpalatable.

The Long Earth 4: The Long Utopia. By Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter. Harper. $26.99.

The late Terry Pratchett will be
remembered for his creation of the thoroughly wonderful and bizarre Discworld,
which rides through space on the backs of four elephants (there was once a
fifth) that in turn ride on Great A’Tuin, a truly enormous “star turtle.”
Although the most-recent Discworld books have not quite been up to the quality
of earlier ones, the series as a whole, with its thoroughly winning and
decidedly peculiar mixture of magic, science, fantasy, sarcasm, satire and
stylishness, is a gem. And it is good that Pratchett’s memory will long be tied
to Discworld, because otherwise it might be too strongly attached to The Long Earth, a co-production with
Stephen Baxter that is as lurchingly unattractive as the Discworld books, taken
as a whole, are admirable.

The third Long Earth novel, The Long
Mars, showed some promise in pursuing multiple plot threads in ways that
actually became periodically intriguing, but the fourth book, The Long Utopia, is back to the
large-scale incoherence of the first two, compounded in this case by an
altogether predictable (and overdone) “space-age Christ” story; the death of a
couple of key characters (so dully handled that it is the end of the cyborg
animal, not that of the human, that is genuinely affecting); and the
introduction and eventual dismissal of yet another
significant plot strand, this one involving aliens that suddenly show up on one
world of the Long Earth and that, while not actively hostile, are busily
engaged in a cataclysmic enterprise that could eventually spell doom not only
to that particular world but also to all the others – however many millions
there are.

One significant misstep here is the
authors’ decision to downplay the importance and role of Lobsang, the
artificial distributed intelligence who in some ways has godlike powers but in
others is all too human – indeed, in The
Long Utopia he decides to die, then reincarnate himself in entirely human
fashion, only to discover eventually that his more-powerful form is needed to
counter the incipient (if largely unintentional) alien threat. Lobsang also
comes to terms here, in rather too facile a fashion, with the Next, post-human
denizens of the Long Earth who turn out in this volume to be just as purblind
in their way as ordinary humans, whom they usually dismissively call “dim-bulbs”
or “these others,” are in theirs.

It is hard to know how much of what
happens in The Long Utopia is from
Pratchett and how much from Baxter, but certainly the plodding pace and
formulaic characters point more toward the latter than the former – which would
scarcely be a surprise near the end of Pratchett’s life. The book, when it is
not actually bad, is simply ordinary. Take the title: the story offers more of
a dystopia than a utopia, but it is not even very convincing on that basis.
“All humans needed, some Next argued – all they needed to turn the Long Earth
into a true Long Utopia – was a little gentle nudging from their intellectual
superiors.” Or, as one character asks a member of the Next, “A Long Utopia. Is
that your goal?” The response: “We don’t have a goal.” Neither does this novel,
at least much of the time. The opening chapter sets the tone, more or less, of
the whole: “It was only a coincidence, historians of the Next would later
agree, that Stan Berg should be born in Miami West 4, the Low Earth footprint
city where Cassie Poulson had grown up. Cassie Poulson, on whose High Meggers
property the primary assembler proved to be located – an anomaly which, in the
end, would shape Stan Berg’s short life, and much more.” Berg, a thoroughly
uninteresting character, is this book’s Christ figure, so identified quite
explicitly by other characters. He is thus heroic in a way different from that
of Joshua Valienté, a recurring central figure who has less to do in this novel
than in the three previous ones: his main contribution here is to inspire
another character to research the Valienté family tree, the setting-forth of
which produces the most interesting sections of the book. But all this eventually
leads only to a meeting between Valienté and his father, after which another
character comments, “You atoned with your father, Joshua. Important step on
your spiritual journey as a mythic hero.” Oh, please.

The other “mythic hero” here, Stan, is more
unidimensional than Joshua, his obvious Christ-ness made super-explicit in
his very own Sermon on the Mount type of scene, which occurs beneath an
under-construction space elevator that is known as the Beanstalk. This is a
place where some listeners call him Master and, as one character observes –
just to make things blindingly obvious – “I think we just heard the Sermon
Under the Beanstalk, delivered by a messiah called Stan.” And of course a
messiah must conclude his earthly (or Long Earthly) mission by dying for a
great and grand cause, and of course must go to that death willingly after
satisfactorily being offered the world by Satan and turning it down (the Next
actually make an offer much like this to Stan). And so things happen here,
after Stan delivers with down-home pomposity a three-part philosophy that a
member of the Next says is “the basis of a creed that even the Next could
embrace.” It is all so well-meaning and so very, very trivial, and it is all so
far beneath the brilliance that was (at least for many years) the work of Terry
Pratchett that The Long Utopia ends
up as a kind of footnote of embarrassment for a fine writer in precipitous
decline. The (+++) rating for this book actually includes one (+) in memoriam. But there are so many other
Pratchett works (including collaborations) that are far better than this that
readers need not court disappointment here unless they are quite determined to
read as much by Pratchett as they possibly can.

Some composers seem to have
thought in pairs, Brahms definitely being one. His four symphonies are
essentially pairs, with Nos. 1 and 2 strongly contrasted and written just a
year apart, after which six years passed until No. 3 – which strongly contrasts
with No. 4, written two years later. Brahms wrote two serenades for orchestra,
two piano concertos, two sonatas for clarinet or viola and piano, and other
paired pieces – including his two early sextets (1859-60 and 1864-65). Unlike
the very different symphony pairs or paired serenades, though, these sextets
have a great deal in common in their sound and approach, with a richness that
is often described as “autumnal” where Brahms is concerned even though they are
music by a man in his late 20s and early 30s. The Concertgebouw Orchestra of
Amsterdam, one of the world’s finest ensembles and one with exceptionally well-burnished
strings, has a nearly ideal sound for the music of Brahms, and the six players
offering these sextets are true to the orchestra’s quality: the music sounds
warm, at times almost glowing, and the structural approach that Brahms took
here – using formal classical models but altering them through, among other
things, asymmetrical musical subjects – comes through very clearly and not at
all academically. These are major-key works (in B-flat and G, respectively),
but as so often in Brahms (and in an even more pronounced way in his later
music), they have periods of minor-key-like melancholy that never quite becomes
sadness but instead presents a kind of wistful pathos. There is probably some
biographical reason for this where the sextets are concerned: they were written
after Brahms, who never married, precipitated a breakup with a woman to whom he
had secretly become engaged, and there is some evidence in the musical themes
themselves that this subject was on the composer’s mind when writing these
works. Yet whatever autobiography Brahms may have inserted here is irrelevant
to enjoying and being moved by the music, which the Concertgebouw players handle
on a new, very well-recorded Bayer Records SACD in a way that beautifully melds
their formal structure with their emotional underpinnings.

The pairing of Ives’ first
two symphonies is a convenience of recording rather than anything integral to
the works themselves, but in fact they make a fascinatingly contrasted duo –
and share certain elements as well as containing some that are strikingly
different. Ives is in many ways a quintessentially American composer, but a
very fine Chandos SACD featuring the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra under Sir
Andrew Davis shows just how internationally understandable his music has now
become: these are first-rate performances that thoroughly explore the
essentially European nature of the first symphony and the much more overtly
nationalistic American elements of the second. Symphony No. 1 dates to 1898 and
was Ives’ graduation project at Yale, under the supervision of the very
conservative and by all reports prickly Horatio Parker, an important composer
and educator of the time but by no means one willing to encourage Ives’
experiments in tonality, hymn-tune use, popular songs or other forward-looking
elements. Redolent of Tchaikovsky, Brahms and Dvořák, Ives’ First has little of the composer’s unique personality about
it, yet it is a very well-made work with some fine melodies, and it shows a
thorough mastery of sonata form, counterpoint and other traditional
compositional techniques that Ives was later to jettison – but with which he
was clearly quite familiar (and at which he was certainly adept). Symphony No.
2, which spans the 19th and 20th centuries, dates to
1897-1901, and its slow movement may be the one that Ives originally planned
for the earlier symphony but had to remove because it was too harmonically daring
for Parker’s taste (although it scarcely sounds that way today). The themes of
Ives’ Second, unlike thoseof his
earlier symphony, are often drawn from hymns, folk songs, marches, even student
songs, and even listeners who do not recognize the specific tunes will sense a
level of humor and playfulness here that is absent in Symphony No. 1. Yet by
and large, the lighthearted elements are encased in traditional, serious
symphonic form, and it is this that makes the pairing of these symphonies and
their first-rate handling by Davis so intriguing: Ives knew quite well how to
write conventional Romantic-era symphonies, and very deliberately tuned his
back on them and on this type of music in general. In a sense, the final chord
of Symphony No. 2 – an 11-note dissonance added by Ives decades after he
initially composed the symphony – is a perfect metaphor for looking both back
and ahead. Its sound is as startling as can be and in that sense seems very
much of the 20th century, but its origin is in a 19th-century
dance-band custom of ending an evening by having every player play any note at
all, as loudly as possible.

As the 20th
century progressed in American music, the influence of European-focused
composers and teachers such as Parker (1863-1919) faded, being replaced by that
of other composer-educators such as Quincy Porter (1897-1966) – who, like Ives,
attended Yale University and was taught by Parker. Ives himself was always an
outlier in American music, his works almost wholly unknown until close to his
death in 1954 – but today it seems quite apt to have music by Porter performed
by a quartet that takes its name from Ives. A new Naxos CD of Porter’s String
Quartets Nos. 5-8 (he wrote nine in all) complements a 2008 release by the same
performers of Quartets Nos. 1-4; in fact, parts of the new recording date to
2008, although the performances were not completed until 2012. These are
mid-century quartets (1935, 1937, 1943 and 1950), and all look back in exactly
the way that Ives’ music did not. They are short, none running even 19 minutes,
and uniformly well-constructed. All were written after Porter returned to the
United States from three years in Paris, and all show solid familiarity with
string writing and a rather modest use of dissonance (which became more
pronounced in works that Parker wrote later than these). The eighth quartet,
the shortest of these four, is the most structurally interesting, being in two
movements (the first featuring slow-fast-moderate sections) and concluding with
an Adagio molto espressivo rather
than the expected quick finale. Porter’s chamber music is not as well-known as
his orchestral works and not as influential, but this CD shows its strengths
clearly and in well-balanced, idiomatic performances that fully explore the
quartets’ sophistication and careful construction.

The notion of pairing is not
a significant one in the Porter quartets, but it is important in a new Piano
Classics recording of music by Alkan. Vincenzo Maltempo, a first-rate
interpreter of this repertoire with a deep understanding of Alkan’s
peculiarities, excellent qualities and limitations, here offers a recital that
seems at first glance like a hodgepodge: a collection of largely unrelated
works taken from various sets of Alkan pieces, composed at different times in
the composer’s life (1813-1888). There is, however, method rather than madness
to Maltempo’s selection for this recording. He performs here on a restored Érard piano – Alkan’s favorite
instrument. The specific piano used by Maltempo postdates Alkan – it was built
in 1899 – but it is still constructed in the Érard manner, and the manner of other pianos designed prior to
the Steinway innovations of the 1850s. For example, Steinway created cast-iron
frames made in a single casting, and invented crossed strings that produce
wonderful evenness and purity of sound. But Alkan did not initially have access
to such instruments and had long since stopped giving public recitals by the
time they became available. Like Bach writing for the harpsichord or clavichord
– rather than the piano – Alkan wrote for an instrument different from modern
ones, a piano whose bass and highest treble ranges had an inherently different
sound from that of the middle range. And Alkan incorporated the effects of
those sonic differences (which it would be wrong to deem limitations) into his piano
works. Maltempo has chosen for this recording a group of works that he feels
showcase to particularly good effect the advantages of playing Alkan on an Érard. Among them are two pairs: Marche Funèbre and Marche Triomphale (Opp. 26 and 27) and Capriccio alla soldatesca and Le tambour bat aux champs (Opp. 50 and
50bis). Maltempo makes an excellent case for using an Érard to show the contrasts between these paired pieces: the drum
effects alone in the Marche Funèbre
are enough to show the special qualities of this piano. Equally impressive is
the concentrated tragedy of Le tambour
bat aux champs, which, like its companion piece, subtly (and sometimes not
so subtly) undermines the notion of military glory. Every work on this CD
showcases elements of the special sound and percussive – and expressive –
qualities the piano Maltempo uses. For example, there is distinctive
near-modernity in Trois Petites
Fantaisies, especially in the first and third pieces, with the
near-childlike sound of the middle piece serving as a strong contrast. And in
the eighth of the 25 Préludes,
Op. 31, there is an absolutely stunning level of originality in expressing
the work’s title, which is, with quotation marks, “Chanson de la folle au bord de la mer” (“Song of the madwoman on
the seashore”). The tone painting here is truly remarkable, and a considerable
amount of its effect comes from the sound world of the Érard on which Maltempo performs the piece. This is a fascinating
disc from start to finish.

Of lesser but still
considerable interest is a new Timpani CD of music by Reynaldo Hahn, born the
same year as Ives (1874) but, unlike the American composer – who essentially
stopped creating music around 1920 – continuing to produce works until the end
of his life in 1947. A naturalized Frenchman born in Venezuela, Hahn is best
known for his songs. He was a child prodigy and for a time a considerable
presence in the musical life of Paris, being not only a composer but also a
conductor, music critic, diarist, theater director, and even a salon singer. Hahn’s
music is well-crafted and pleasant, not particularly challenging, and generally
– like Porter’s – something of a throwback to earlier times. One pair of pieces
on this disc has been recorded before; the other pair is of world première recordings: the unpublished Sérénade for flute,
oboe, clarinet and bassoon, which dates to 1942, and Divertissement pour une fête de nuit for winds, piano,
percussion and string quartet (1931). The former of these is pleasant chamber
music with attractive interaction among the winds. The latter is atmospheric
and interestingly scored, its four movements variously establishing nighttime,
presenting a lakeside scene, and offering concluding al fresco waltzes. There is a certain persistent delicacy to Hahn’s
music, which has some characteristics of Impressionism, coupled with a grace
and neoclassical balance: Hahn as a conductor specialized in Mozart, and some
of his music’s poise may come from that source. There is expert detailing in
these works, akin to that in Hahn’s prose – a characteristic he shares with
Marcel Proust, his lifelong friend and sometime lover. The early (1905) Le Bal de Béatrice d’Este, a
seven-movement suite for winds, piano, two harps and percussion, shows this
just as clearly as does the late (1944) Concerto
provençal for flute, clarinet, bassoon and strings. This last work
is a three-movement suite that sounds nothing like Respighi’s Pines of Rome but that pays similar
musical tribute to trees, in this case in France rather than Italy: plane
trees, pines and olive trees. There is something of the affected, occasionally even
a touch of the effete, in Hahn’s music as heard on this disc: it seems more of
the salon than of the concert hall. Smooth on its surface, much of the music
sounds as if there is little if any depth beneath the well-polished exterior.
The performances here are very fine and clearly committed to the pieces, but
the works themselves make this a (+++) recording – albeit one of special
interest to anyone wanting to explore some less-known French music of the early
to middle 20th century.

All music is a journey – an
internal one, a spiritual one if you like. And some music takes listeners on
travels in a different way, whether to a geographical location (say,
Mendelssohn’s The Hebrides overture)
or an inward-focused one (Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and many other works).
Composers and performers alike are always seeking new places to which to take
audiences, and nowadays that can mean exploring unfamiliar repertoire or
looking at well-known music in new and different ways. Thus, the Catalyst
Quartet combines its arrangement of Bach’s Goldberg
Variations with a performance of Glenn Gould’s sole string quartet (Op. 1,
his only composition with an opus number). There is some historical
significance to this mixture: Gould, who had previously written an atonal
bassoon sonata, an unfinished piano sonata, and not much else, finished the
ambitious quartet in 1955, just a few months before recording the Goldberg Variations – which promptly
turned him into a piano sensation. The quartet is in no direct way related to
Bach’s work, however. It is very chromatic, with severe intonation challenges
occasioned by Gould’s lack of familiarity with string playing. There are lots
of octave passages and an overall feeling of Schoenberg-like dimensions – the
quartet is not particularly idiomatic, and is certainly uneven, and it goes on
rather too long (more than 35 minutes). But it has sections of undeniable power,
notably in its fugues, and is of considerable interest for string players –
although rather less so for listeners, whom the work does not take on a journey
as effectively as it escorts the performers through and into Gould’s mind. The
quartet has been recorded a number of times, as far back as 1960, with its difficulties
of balance and complexities of structure allowing each ensemble to make it
sound quite different. The Catalyst Quartet’s reading is intense, dramatic and
generally convincing, although the work itself never quite hangs together
strongly – if it were not by Gould, it would likely be significantly more
obscure than it already is. The string-quartet version of the Goldberg Variations is also very
well-played on this Azica recording, but the arrangement itself will be
entirely a matter of taste. Listeners well-versed in the music will find the
handling of the material, especially the canons, quite interesting in
string-quartet form, but the variations themselves are not served especially
well when translated to four separate voices – their interweaving here does not
seem very “Bachian,” although the playing itself is quite fine. Like many
journeys, this one will be enjoyable based largely on what travelers – in this
case, listeners – choose to bring along.

The journey in Voyage by Pierre Schroeder is a much
more overt one. This is a Navona release offering an 11-movement suite whose
elements range from the piano solos Vertigo
and Mountain Veil to three ensemble
pieces requiring a conductor to keep everything together: Late Harvest, Lowland and Snow.
Like many modern compositions, this one uses elements of classical music but is
primarily a blend of other forms, here including folk and, especially, jazz and
blues. Bleu Nuit, for instance, with
its alto flute above piano and double bass, is very jazz-like in its intended
portrayal of a nighttime scene, while the longing expressed by mezzo-soprano
and piano in Shores seems straight
out of nightclub or lounge singing. There are some interesting instrumental
combinations here, and the use of percussion is well-considered and effective
in providing a foundation for many of the pieces. And there is some attractive
lyricism and even yearning from time to time, as in Gypsy – a journey in itself – for violin, clarinet, piano and
cello. But although Highway I opens
the suite and Highway II appears
halfway through, with Hourglass near
the end symbolizing the passage of time during this particular instance of
musical travel, there is not really any sense of development or progress as Voyage moves from piece to piece. The works
are largely of the same type, many in very similar slow-to-moderate tempo, and
for all the differences of instrumentation, the overall mood varies little from
element to element. So there is some sort of travel, yes, but little feeling
that one has arrived anywhere in particular when the nearly hour-long work has
concluded.

Jazz dominates much of a
Ravello CD of Michael Calvert’s music as well, but here it is blended with even
more influences than those used by Schroeder. Among those are rock, pop,
Japanese music, serialism, and some very specific classical elements: Lascivious Pleasing draws on John
Dowland (as well as the Beatles), Gaston
Amoureux on Debussy, Fantasia in
August on Britten, and Eight Studies
on Messiaen. Calvert himself is a guitarist, and his writing for the instrument
is intelligent, well-considered and well-adapted to guitar players’
capabilities. It is not always, however, very interesting. Eight Studies sustains well, with none of its pieces lasting more
than two-and-a-half minutes, but the longer works – including Rhapsody on a Riff and Suma, each in the
seven-and-a-half-minute range – simply do not have enough variation of sound to
keep non-guitar-playing listeners involved throughout. The travel here is
through various forms of music, to various classical composers’ sensibilities,
and to some extent geographically to New Zealand, on whose culture Calvert
consciously draws in an attempt to create guitar music that is not European in
focus or sound. Whatever the value of this nationalistic impulse, it does not,
from the standpoint of listeners encountering the music without preconceptions
and without personal performance capability on the guitar, make the works heard
here particularly compelling or distinctive, despite the very fine performances
they receive from Matthew Marshall. Guitar players will likely find the CD far
more intriguing than will listeners who play other instruments or none.

The journey on a new Decca
CD featuring chants by the monks of Norcia is emphatically an inward one as
well as one to the monks’ monastery in Italy. This disc samples and reproduces
the music that the 18 members of this monastic order sing day in and day out as
they go about their devotions and their secular activities (they operate a
craft brewery). This particular community is unusually young for a cloistered
group, with average age of just 33. As a result, there is a freshness to the
sound of the voices here, and there is certainly strong devotional feeling that
comes through in the disc’s 33 tracks – many of them lasting a minute or less. Certainly
there is historical interest in Norcia, the birthplace of Saint Benedict, and
in these monks’ resumption of singing of Gregorian chant after such devotionals
had been absent from the town for nearly two centuries. And yes, there is
purity of sound and a kind of mystical beauty to the music. Yet there is little
that is distinctive from piece to piece, with the result that the CD does
indeed have a kind of timeless feeling – but it is one akin to that created by
New Age recordings that are intended to lull listeners into a kind of peace,
harmony and attunement to a form of spirituality greater than themselves. To be
sure, the monks themselves would undoubtedly welcome the notion that their
singing – here focused on the life of the Virgin Mary – transports listeners
outside their humdrum lives and connects them spiritually with the greater and,
to them, divine world limned by Gregorian chant. And the hypnotic quality of
these pieces – including one, an antiphon called Nos qui Christi iugum, composed by the monks themselves – is
pervasive. Listeners who come to the disc with the desire and intent to clear their
minds of distractions and focus on the chants, whether or not they follow or
understand the specific words, will find themselves absorbed and elevated. Ones
seeking a more worldly sort of enjoyment in music, on the other hand, are more
likely to find so extended a performance of this material to be as austere and monochromatic as a monk’s
habit.